


proof and bulwark

by theseourbodies



Series: they stumble that run fast [1]
Category: due South
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 14:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8921257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: Set during episode 3.09 Dead Guy RunningFraser reflects on the truths he has collected after Francesca confesses her fears.





	

**Author's Note:**

> References the beating Fraser takes in 1.17 The Deal

After she tells you the truth of it, of her raw fears, all you can see is her brother's tight, angry expression, from years ago now, superimposed over Francesca's more delicate face. The pain from your own beating is long gone; it's left no marks on you. But staring down at her dark, bowed head, you remember the ache of it, and how that memory is inextricably linked to the blood on Ray's knuckles, barely wiped away, the stink of copper and sweat that filled the car. 

You remember what it was like, as she must, what it had felt like to believe that Ray would do anything to right the wrong committed against you; you allow yourself to think that it must have felt familiar to Ray, that the blood on your face and body must have looked like the bruises on hers.  

Ray Vecchio protects his people, and you know what that looks like in translation: blood on his hands, bruised knuckles. You know intimately the lengths he's gone to. And that's why that body waiting for you in interrogation room one cannot possibly be dead at his hands. 

You know it with every ounce of your being, more clearly than you have been able to know anything since you came back to a new face for the old name, a new man to take Ray's place. You know that you have truth of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ 3.4.33-37:
> 
> Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,  
> And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,  
> If it be made of penetrable stuff,  
> If damned custom have not brass'd it so  
> That it is proof and bulwark against sense.


End file.
